According to the Game Update news , they have adjusted caravan convoying rates for WvW. I'm assuming down to discourage what JohnC saw this weekend. BTW Fiero Reanne is not a TR poster, just a member of the CBE guild.

Yeap, I've read about that. IMO, the rewards should be disabled completely unless enemy players are very close to caravans. Same thing should be done to various creatures in WvW area - they should not drop any loot or give any XP. I've seen some suspicious groups of people just hunting creatures far away from any "action", I reported them all for botting and they "disappeared" after some time

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I don't think rewards for caravans should be disabled, they just have to better tweak the overall reward system for WvW so it's beneficial to be in combat all the time or being proactive in how you approach it. Right now the rewards are too static and depend too much on participating in specific parts of WvW.

The only time I've had issues with being underleveled is when I miss an entire part of a zone. Going back through and doing that part usually catches me up, sometimes puts me over. It's important to do the story quests too, those offer quite a bit of experience. I've also found I level quite a bit slower if there aren't zone events happening. Zone events offer easy, fun, and fast experience. I out leveled a zone simply by hoping from one event to another as they're right next to eachother and sometimes ending back at another event I completed earlier. Just completing hearts is boring and doesn't net much exp. This is one of the things I really like about Rift (it's namesake) and it seems like GW2 had something similar planned, but they aren't nearly as in depth.

The zerging is going to keep happening till they stop server transfers from being free. The rating system for WvW also wont work till they stop server transfers as people constantly transferring completely borks the rating system. I'm guessing that's why they moved it to a 48 hour rotation instead of a 2 month rotation.

I've put in roughly 40 hours and I'm only at level 37 though and I have a 16 mesmer. I'm not leveling nearly as fast as mighty talked about. It could be due to the way I was playing (using a hammer as a guardian instead of a greatsword). Leveling crafting is also really expensive and time consuming (unless you know the ropes), although I stopped leveling to do it for a bit before deciding it was a bad idea.

I hit 44 last night in a whirlwind of events and skill challenges. The leveling for me is not even an issue, when I play I don't even care about my level and it makes it that much more enjoyable. I'm starting to get to a point where I feel average powered with respect to my DPS, maybe even a little under powered. I am a good healer though.

Didn't take the time to sell much on the TP, need to do so because I'm broke and need my level 40 manual so I can respec and focus on a build for traits. Still having an absolute blast with the game, and thus far the grind just doesn't exist for me. I noticed last night (and perhaps Im wrong) but it looks as if your personal story lines up location wise with the are you should be questing in when you're at the level of the story line.

One annoyance last night was a ridiculously simple escort quest that I couldn't complete alone because a bunch of wolves (who summon other wolves as they near death) kept spawning. Must have been 15-20 of them, some of them veteran status. I can't solo that. I'm also somewhat annoyed that you can't buffed abilities such that they all go off with respect to their internal CD in the order I mashed them; It feels like while Im auto attacking I can't press to drop 2 turrets and glue shot while auto attacking. It will usually buffer the 1 ability after the last auto attack and that's it. Maybe it's lag, but I doubt it.

The goods still heavily outweigh the bads, and I was able to use the TP all night long without interruption. If anyone wants to quest around my level (44) I'm on the hedge of deravi as "Bonan" - the best asuran healer ever! Wouldn't mind running some dungeons or exploring them either.

Bensam123 wrote:I don't think rewards for caravans should be disabled, they just have to better tweak the overall reward system for WvW so it's beneficial to be in combat all the time or being proactive in how you approach it. Right now the rewards are too static and depend too much on participating in specific parts of WvW.

Well, not completely disabled all the time, but as I said, only reward escorts if the caravan is in danger of being attacked (or is currently being attacked) by one of the opposing factions. The rewards for hunting creatures in WvW area, however, should DEFINITELY go away. I've seen pretty amusing situation last night - our team was attacking one of the towers in Eternal Battlegrounds (I think it was Bravost), near the place the "elite" grub spawns, and the opposing team was totally ignoring us and was instead trying to kill that grub I understand that some people might become frustrated by disorganization on their team and decide to do something else, but that "something else" shouldn't happen in WvW area with its (currently) EXTREMELY limited number of spots per each team.

Bensam123 wrote:I've put in roughly 40 hours and I'm only at level 37 though and I have a 16 mesmer. I'm not leveling nearly as fast as mighty talked about.

Eh, I'm also a pretty slow "leveller" overall, especially since I tend to jump from one character to another very often (still trying to find "the one" which I would like in both PvE and WvW) and tend to do misc things like helping random people out with Sharkmaw Caverns puzzle and such. I wouldn't worry about it at all - there are no in-game "world first" achievements for this game or anything like that

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Yeah they need to remove the GCD. If the ability needs to be channeled or has a cast time to it, then no, but otherwise abilities that are instant shouldn't require you to wait to use another ability. I know some abilities are exempt from this, such as F1 abilities (for guardian at least) and some slot skills.

Really confusing, overall the game needs to be better descriptions for abilities, stats, and other things that interact with one another (like traits that modify other abilities). It also needs retroactive abilities where it tells you different stats when it's been modified by a ability. Compared to WoW, it's really lackluster, but WoW didn't really clean that up till Wrath and more so in Cata, so I don't think that's terrible.

steelcity_ballin wrote: I'm also somewhat annoyed that you can't buffed abilities such that they all go off with respect to their internal CD in the order I mashed them; It feels like while Im auto attacking I can't press to drop 2 turrets and glue shot while auto attacking. It will usually buffer the 1 ability after the last auto attack and that's it. Maybe it's lag, but I doubt it.

YEah I think there is no queuing of actions going on, and GCD is there for every action. Its annoying especially when it comes time for a self heal, I could be around 1200 health or so, pop the self heal and nothing happens, then dead. its very very annoying and frustrating.

Bensam123 wrote:Really confusing, overall the game needs to be better descriptions for abilities, stats, and other things that interact with one another (like traits that modify other abilities). It also needs retroactive abilities where it tells you different stats when it's been modified by a ability. Compared to WoW, it's really lackluster, but WoW didn't really clean that up till Wrath and more so in Cata, so I don't think that's terrible.

While I hate directly comparing GW2 to WoW, this is sorely needed. I have had to make a spreadsheet for my Guardian to figure out if a piece of gear is a worthy upgrade or not. I mostly run Sword & Torch and then Scepter & Torch for those ranged situations. I am running some Power and Condition gear and sloting Crit runes.

Another thing I wish there was is a map overlay. I hate having to stop press M, look at the map, press M again, and continue on.

Last night I did the Skyshatter event, which was un-eventful. I fought veteran bosses harder than him. Got some 'gold' gear that is totally useless to me.

Hit 50 last night. Also purchased my level 40 trait manual - for some reason I thought that it was 2g so I had been putting it off a little. Ran more AC with a 'guild' of sorts who were pretty terrible actually. 3 rangers and a pug rogue, yikes. It was painful but hey I pulled them through it well enough. Really happy with all the attention ANet is giving it's user base regarding the continual fixes. Haven't crashed in many many sessions so I feel like that bug is gone whether it was the game or my system, since my bios flash I have had 0 incidents. The biggest complaint I have is that cross-server parties do not work 99% of the time, and adding/removing/swapping people in and our in a dungeon-in-progress is unreliable and causes resets more often than not.

I'm, most excited that I can purchase level 50 gems now and 'spec' into healing. I took reduced cooldowns on elixir gun and +dmg on elixirs and flame thrower. I'll worry about 'build' correctness when I hit 80, until then I'm having a ton of fun, playing alone most of the time even!

I'm having a blast with the game, but my hardware performance could be better. I'm running it on a WinXP 32bit machine with a AMD 5000+ proc, 4GB of RAM (I do know that the entire 4GB is not addressable), and a Saphirre 4670 video card. I've turned every video setting in the game to low, and run it at 1280x1024. In the best of circumstances, I get about 16ish FPS - In the worst of circumstances (lots of people joining an event to take down a 'Champion' enemy), I've seen it get as low as 3 FPS.

I have tried to install a fresh copy of W7 64 bit, but the OS kept freezing because it did not like the graphics driver - both the default one the OS installs and the updated one from the AMD website.

So here's my question: If I were to go buy a new graphics card, what would be the ideal one to get my FPS up, but yet not make my CPU the bottleneck?

Fighthouse wrote:So here's my question: If I were to go buy a new graphics card, what would be the ideal one to get my FPS up, but yet not make my CPU the bottleneck?

I wouldn't worry about bottlenecks too much, I would get something last gen or so, Like a fermi 560TI or the AMD performance equivalent give or take. My buddy is running my old Core2Duo 6300 and a Radeon 4850 and not doing too badly. He mostly can't play large PVP effectively but otherwise the framerates are mostly steady he reports. I would get something that will last a while since that entire machine is aging rapidly. Does your motherboard even support PCI-E? If not, I would seriously consider a total upgrade rather than throwing upgrades away on a dead platform.

I was running an old compaq with a AMD 3500+, 2 GB PC3200 and an AIW Radeon 9800. Needless to say, I haven't done any serious gaming in the last 6+ years. The setup I listed above was donated by a friend who was getting rid of some old components.

Sadly, I can't justify to SWMBO a $1000 desktop config when we are trying to get rid of some existing debt. However, I could shmooze in a ~$100 video card after a nice date night.

I was running an old compaq with a AMD 3500+, 2 GB PC3200 and an AIW Radeon 9800. Needless to say, I haven't done any serious gaming in the last 6+ years. The setup I listed above was donated by a friend who was getting rid of some old components.

Sadly, I can't justify to SWMBO a $1000 desktop config when we are trying to get rid of some existing debt. However, I could shmooze in a ~$100 video card after a nice date night.

Maybe a Radeon 7770? I think those are around $100. Does your motherboard have a PCIe slot? Did you try a clean install on Win7 or upgrade? 32 bit OS will only address around 3GB of ram I believe.

I don't know off the top of my head, but one of the biggest gains for me in MMOs is usually around the number of effects or the detail of these effects. I used to lower those even in WoW days but admittedly on a less capable machine. Draw distance in games can affect quite a bit too, if those are options you might want to throttle them back. Anything with shadows, lighting, ambiance and the like too. I can't think of much more you could do to improve performance beyond that. Can you overclock the CPU at all? If you don't mess with voltages you're probably not going to hurt anything long term.

steelcity_ballin wrote:I don't know off the top of my head, but one of the biggest gains for me in MMOs is usually around the number of effects or the detail of these effects. I used to lower those even in WoW days but admittedly on a less capable machine. Draw distance in games can affect quite a bit too, if those are options you might want to throttle them back. Anything with shadows, lighting, ambiance and the like too. I can't think of much more you could do to improve performance beyond that. Can you overclock the CPU at all? If you don't mess with voltages you're probably not going to hurt anything long term.

I did set everything to the lowest setting already. Also, even though the CPU I have in there is notable for being easily overclocked from 2.6Ghz to 3.0Ghz, I only have a heatsink on it, as the fan was thrown out by the previous user years ago. I wouldn't want to push it past the stock settings with only passive cooling.

rogue426 wrote:Maybe a Radeon 7770? I think those are around $100. Does your motherboard have a PCIe slot? Did you try a clean install on Win7 or upgrade? 32 bit OS will only address around 3GB of ram I believe.

The mobo does have a PCIe slot, but I am still using the mATX compax case from the previous components. The 4670 fits in there alright, but I'm not sure how well it would fit other cards.

Fighthouse wrote: So here's my question: If I were to go buy a new graphics card, what would be the ideal one to get my FPS up, but yet not make my CPU the bottleneck?

You probably want either Radeon HD7770 1GB or Radeon HD7850 2GB. My Radeon HD7770 plays Guild Wars 2 acceptably at 1920x1080. My laptop struggles a bit with the game at 1920x1080, but it's playable. My Radeon HD6970 plays Guild Wars 2 with all settings at maximum at 2560x1600. I will second Rogue's recommendation of the Antec Three Hundred case. Sometimes, the Illusion version is offered on sale for nearly the same price. It comes with two more fans than the basic version does.

I suppose that I should focus on advancing just one of my characters. They're currently at levels 36, 26, 15, 12, 12, 11, 3 and 2.

If any of the TR forum regulars would like an invitation to the guild, please PM me or one of the other officers here or whisper in-game (Just An Engineer).

I just spent Sat 9-1 through Sun 9-9 being unable to log into my account after doing the unthinkable and 'changing my password' after a spam/hack email was sent to me.

I'm freaking ticked over this. I bought the game Sat Aug 25th, and I've lost about a week of playtime. Took two support tickets to get this resolved. I was completely disgusted that they had no two-stage authentication for accounts, and the fact they turned off their 2003 simplistic 'recover your password' link.

I don't know if this is an ongoing issue, but only change the password if you have to. If you're hacked or otherwise compromised send an email to http://www.arena.net/contact/ the support link on that page.

....

Otherwise? I love my engineer. *GUNS*. Now I hope I can spend some time playing this weekend.

JAE? Jesus, 36? Dude, you aren't paying for this monthly, you'll be able to play until they shut the servers down. It's ok to relax a little bit.

DiMaestro wrote:I bought the game Sat Aug 25th, and I've lost about a week of playtime.

You didn't "lose" anything, it's not a regular MMO with a monthly fees But yea, they did have (and continue to have) issues with accounts hijacking and authentication system. Which could be easily resolved if they would've tried to implement a proper authentication system using security token-generated codes (like WoW and SWToR has). One (and only) thing Bioware did right is implementing this system right from the beginning, ArenaNet should've done that too.

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I'm not saying I monetarily lost a weeks playtime. **** look at what I said to JAE earlier.

I'm saying I lost the ability to log into my account for 8 days.

JohnC wrote:

DiMaestro wrote:I bought the game Sat Aug 25th, and I've lost about a week of playtime.

You didn't "lose" anything, it's not a regular MMO with a monthly fees But yea, they did have (and continue to have) issues with accounts hijacking and authentication system. Which could be easily resolved if they would've tried to implement a proper authentication system using security token-generated codes (like WoW and SWToR has). One (and only) thing Bioware did right is implementing this system right from the beginning, ArenaNet should've done that too.

Hit 51 last night. Was questing in some earlier zones and came across a level 18 champion giant. Took 50+ people over 25 minutes to kill it. I swear that people still don't understand a simple dodge mechanic. Also got another jumping puzzle achievement. Had a good luck day for dyes, got 3 of them yesterday. Need/want to level my cooking a bit more, have the time, money, and mats to do it so I'm excited for that. Still just playing my engy. My how he's grown; *tear*.

Oh yeah, I meant to ask if anyone had done the cow-event where you put on a cow disguise and train the other cows to fight and what not. At the very end, you can bet on 1 of 4 cows to race. The bets are 25s (yes silver) a piece, but it doesn't say what the payout is. Any idea?

tanker27 wrote:25s is a lot at that level, heck I go on record and say any level. I did bet on the cow launcher but I was always wrong. It had the same 25s buy in.

Mine had a 50s buy in. I clicked through without reading the details, and lost horribly. I only had 56s at the time

Ouch. My biggest cost saver is to use PvP as a way to get to LA quickly and then whichever hub I need to get to from there. Also, ALWAYS have +magic find gear/food if you can. I make tons of silver every night just from blues I grab and sell rather than salvage.

BAH! So it seems I made some serious wrong decisions when leveling my Guardian to 80 (which I reached last night). I did the same thing in WoW when I didnt know the in's and out of the game.

So I didnt gather anything. No ore, wood, or food. Nothing. And it seems I chose the wrong path in my personal story which gives me rewards that are useless to me. Grrrrrr oh and to top it of I blew a lot of Karma I shouldnt have.